The Tortilla Curtain Sparknotes

The Tortilla Curtain Awarded the French Prize for best foreign novel, The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle follows the lives of illegal immigrants after entering the United States and the struggles they face in their everyday lives. The Tortilla Curtain, although a fiction book, discusses politically charged issues such as illegal immigration, racism, and poverty. Racism and the Mexican culture are two main thematic topics in this piece of literature. As the debate over immigration continues to escalate across the nation, T.C. Boyle has many questions directed towards him from his readers. More specifically, what his views on immigration are. And Boyle has questions of his own. The such questions he states in an interview: “Do you have the right

Since it was written during a time of politically charged climate, people easily could have mistook this for a political commentary that it was not. People may have expected Boyle, an award-winning author, to be able to create a solution for the issues he was so apparently familiar with. On the other hand, another reason there may be backlash is because of Boyle’s nationality as an American. People may be skeptical that a man from New York should be writing on the issue in the first place, and are furthered frustrated when he does not provide a proper solution either. A final reason that there is backlash could stem from raw human emotion. An emotion provoking novel, The Tortilla Curtain could have angered readers as they find no happy ending for the serious problems created. Readers may have felt that the story provided in the novel was left unfinished. This is also the case with many issues today, a constant battle left unresolved. This is why although one can understand where backlash might be coming from, the expectation for Boyle to provide a solution in his book for a much greater issue is